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Monthly Archives: October 2018

How To Be Assertive And Make A Positive Impact

Do you hold yourself back from speaking up?

How many times has your response been meek or perhaps too aggressive?

Where do you find the courage and confidence to be assertive?

Why You Don’t Speak Up

There are many reasons for not speaking up. You might not speak up to avoid conflict, fear of hurting someone’s feelings, or the responsibility that comes with stating your truth and standing in your power. Assertiveness is often incorrectly confused with aggressiveness, but assertiveness is characterized by mutual respect and clear, open, and honest communication. Aggressive behavior on the other hand is disrespectful and shuts people down.

In order to have the courage to speak up and assert yourself, you must let go of your attachment to being liked by everyone. In order to be okay with this, you will need to develop your self-confidence, self-awareness and purpose. This will require you to be in tune with yourself and engaged in the world, physically, mentally and emotionally.I believe that women have refrained from speaking up for so long that there are now slogans such as, lady boss, (fill in the blank) like a boss, and badass or badassery being used to describe empowerment programs for women.There’s a lot of energy around getting women to speak up and take more action towards living life on their own terms. I believe this recharge of energy is much needed, however I think that it can often come with a lot of drama. Unfortunately this can diminish the powerful message that is trying to be conveyed without a positive impact.

Take Time To Heal

Speaking up and being assertive, for women as a collective, is absolutely necessary for a cultural shift. To make a positive impact with our messages of being in our power, we must first heal the wounds that have kept us falling victim to life’s circumstances and not speaking up and embracing our power in the first place.If you don’t take the time and necessary steps to heal, you can easily move into a power-over, self-righteous energy that results in a negative impact, because it puts others down in order to raise ourselves up. Not only does this not give you the opportunity to embrace your power, it may cause you to lose your power in the end. It is very important that you learn to understand your relationship with power.

Power Unused Is Power Useless

Taking a power-to approach to speaking up is about knowing yourself by growing your self-awareness, intention, integrity and confidence. A leader is someone who gets something done and is changing the power paradigm from power-over to power-to. We can intentionally change the meaning of power in order to embrace it authentically and comfortably as a woman. Glora Feldt, author of No Excuses, states, that Power-over is the old, oppressive power paradigm that is dying. Power-to is the new paradigm and innovative power and leadership paradigm that is emerging, if we make it so.

Speaking up and asserting your self to claim the lead is essential for you to make a greater impact as a woman. Katie Orenstein, Founder of the Op Ed Project said, “It is important for women not just to have the power to choose; but to choose power.” When you take an assertive stance you directly say what you mean and ask for what you want.

Beware Of The Passive-Aggressive Trap

When you leave your feelings unexpressed, anger and frustration can come out sidewise, or not directly. This type of behavior is often termed “passive-aggressive.” Here are some potential scenarios where passive-aggressive behavior plays out. You might respond to your co-workers request to stay late with her to finish a project with a silent treatment or eye roll. Passive aggression in asking for a raise might include sending a complaint about your heavy workload in a long, detailed email, without specifically asking for what you want. While passive-aggressive behavior might make you feel momentarily relieved, your goals won’t be accomplished. By returning to an assertive stance and directly saying what you mean and asking for what you want, you have a better chance of getting your needs met.

Network With Purpose

Speaking up and claiming the lead in your life will require you to learn about leadership. I knew little about leadership when I chose to become an entrepreneur. I have since soaked up every leadership course I could find and I found the following networking tips to be the most impactful to this day.

Most women love to network, because networking is seen as primarily relational. I think you would agree that it’s essential to be friendly, authentic, and generous to others, but networking must also be done with purpose and intention if it is to be effective. To speak up and network with purpose, two exchanges will usually occur, an ask and an offer.

Asking for what you want by name is a practice women must learn, and to learn you must practice, if you are to build a life and career that you want. It’s part of owning your power and knowing your worth.

Give it a try and see what happens. In every networking opportunity, identify in advance what you want from the interchange. Then at least once during the conversation, “Ask for it by name.”

Make an offer. What do you have that the other person wants or needs? If she or he does not tell you, ask for that information by name too. Is it something you can offer to provide? If so, say so, and be sure to follow through. If not, say so, and offer an alternative that is something you can deliver on.

Once you have made an ask and an offer in a networking situation (it doesn’t matter which comes first as long as both are done), you have created a mutually beneficial relationship. Relationships that are mutually beneficial are more likely to be sustained, grow over time, be more egalitarian and make a greater impact.

I hope this post will encourage you to speak up and not be afraid of your own power and the impact you can make when you assert yourself with purpose and intention.

How To Successfully Navigate Life’s Challenges

What Is Self-Awareness?

Self-awareness is conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires. We develop our self-awareness by fully engaging in our lives physically, mentally, and emotionally.

By fully engaging in our life we collect experiences that teach us about ourselves. We get in touch with our own unique perspective on things, which informs our feelings and actions. The more we understand ourselves and how we engage with life, when we’re both at our best and under stress, the easier it is to live authentically and in alignment with our true selves.

There’s a lot of talk about the importance of being your best self, your true self, and your authentic self. What does this all mean exactly? It means that you have enough self-awareness to make clear choices in your life that are inspired and motivated by your own wants and desires, as opposed to being lead or dictated by anothers.

Being you best self means embracing your power. Living true to yourself is about being fully expressed. Being authentic means living in alignment with your core values and unapologetically paving the way along your unique life path.

Turn Your Attention Inward

Many leaders in the personal and professional development industry say that self-awareness is the key to success. I could not agree more. Self-awareness is essential for being able to successfully navigate through almost any situation, particularly difficult ones.

How many times have you had a problem that required you to slow down and turn your attention inward to find the answers?

Even though the process of solving the problem may have required you to initially get external support to help you put things into perspective, it was your self-awareness that led you to the solution.

Take Time To Self Reflect

If you are going through a particularly challenging time in your life (personally or professionally), I encourage you to carve some time out of your busy schedule to self reflect on the following questions:

What is happening right now?

Why is this happening?

What do I want to make happen?

How am I going to make it happen?

Don’t worry so much about the “how”, but rather focus your attention on getting crystal clear on the issue at hand. Develop your perspective by writing it out or talking it through with someone you trust who can listen without judgment or giving advice. The “how” will naturally arise out of your ability to become self-aware.

The Power of Your Self-Awareness

You will know you have arrived at the solution to your problem when you feel it in your whole being. There will be a deep knowing of what to do next in order to reach a resolution. Then you can craft a strategic plan with the right action steps.

Getting support at this time could be helpful, as you already know the direction you want to go in. No one can tell you where you want to go. This must come from you and comes from the power of your self-awareness.

Beware of others who tell you how you feel and what you must do. If you follow their suggestions you are giving your power away. You must embrace your power and claim the lead in your life if you want to make the best choices in life that support you along your unique life’s journey.

By not claiming the lead and choosing to be in the driver’s seat you resign yourself to the backseat. When you are not fully engaged physically, mentally and emotionally in your life or striving to do so, your self-confidence will erode over time and your personal power will diminish.

Boost Your Power

To help you boost the power of your self-awareness answer the follow question, then take inspired action.

What are 3 things you must do every day (or on a regular basis) to be able to fully engage physically, mentally and emotionally in your life?

Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you and have the opportunity to connect with you and offer you support if needed.

Accelerate Your Success

Above all when it comes to claiming the lead in your personal and professional life, you must develop your self-awareness. Certainly if you want to reach your fullest potential in your personal life and your business matters.

Effective leadership requires you to look at yourself and how things occur in your daily life. This is due to the internal issues to overcome when you have people follow you. Remember that human life is meant for growth. Consequently, this will require you to get out of your comfort zone more often than you’d probably like.

Find Your Leadership Style

As a leader, you’re responsible for huge potential in your life. Not living up to that potential can eat away at you. You strive to always go towards greatness and excellence. It seems like most of us live well below our potential. Finding out what it is you need to be doing in life is essential to fulfilling your purpose as a human being. For the reason that people lead in different ways, it’s important to find your own leadership style.

Personal Power In Leadership

There is a high level of responsibility that comes with being a good leader. I believe that everyone can learn to lead if they are willing to be awake, accountable and responsible for leading. Leading is to embrace your power and claim the freedom of being true to who you are. Leadership is something you earn; it’s a path of growth and we all want to grow. Certainly, it’s not easy, but it’s a choice. You need to decide to be it and step into owning it.

First of all, to help you step fully into embracing your power and owning your choice to claim the lead in both your personal and professional life – I highly encourage you to develop your self-awareness in the following key areas:

3 Key Areas of Personal Leadership Mastery

#1) Managing Your Mindset

Developing your self-awareness to manage your mindset will allow you to refocus your mind. Leadership is like yoga in that it means taking charge of how the mind works, by redirecting how you think and act.

Peter Koestenbaum, the author of The Inner Side of Greatness, A Philosophy for Leaders says, “A leader must wrestle with inward issues. He or she is expected to have great aspirations, confront great frustrations, achieve great self-control, suffer great betrayals, and manifest great compassion. Addressing the personal side of leadership also requires attention to vision and to scope, for the leader’s mind must be all-encompassing.”

This addresses how leaders think differently. It can make you look at yourself and how things occur in your daily life and how you chose to respond or react in such a way that promotes growth.

#2) Mastering Work-Life Balance

Developing your self-awareness is essential to master work-life balance, which is constantly going up and down like a teeter-totter. I don’t believe that it can stay in the middle for a long time. You must become clear and self-aware of which side you are teetering on.

Furthermore, you need to be able to be aware of when you are spending too much time working and when you’ve spent too much time on your life and not working. The process of becoming more self-aware is a journey of self-discovery. It will require you to look closely and deeply at what you need to do to stay focused on returning to balance over and over again.

#3) Leading Without Old Patterns

The truth is, when you step into leadership, you step out of your comfort zone. Hence when you step out of your comfort zone, old patterns will inevitably come up for you that could prevent you from reaching your fullest potential if you’re not aware of them. Therefore, you must be aware of your old patterns in order to change them, as well as to get in touch with your higher qualities. You have to learn to lead your new life and not lead with old patterns – this is where self-awareness comes into play.

Claim The Lead

Claiming the lead in your personal life and business matters will not be easy. I recommend you begin to gather key players in your life to support you along your journey of self-discovery. One of your key players should be a personal leadership coach. Above all you will accelerate the development of your self-awareness by working directly with a leadership coach, because they can help you navigate the choppy waters that come with getting out of your comfort zone.

Effective leadership requires self-awareness. Your self-awareness will become your greatest asset and support you in taking responsibility and accountability for claiming the lead.

I tuned into the first episode and really enjoyed the conversation about our energy and how we can tap into our own energy. I look forward to tuning inot more episodes. Focusing on our power to lead is so important!

True Secrets to Happiness

February 13, 2019 by klmozz from United States

Great pod cast with a great message, insight and inspiration! Worth your time to listen and learn! Thanks Teena.

Fantastic!

February 7, 2019 by TinaWSchlichte from United States

Teena’s podcast is fantastic! Perfect for my commute! I learn something each time - definitely a “must-listen”.

Teena Evert

Teena Evert, Founder & CEO of Claim The Lead a personal leadership development company. Teena former marriage and family therapist and now life and leadership coach, professional speaker and podcast host, teaches women in business how to best manage their time, energy and relationships, so they can reach their fullest potential in work, life and love.